As with everything internet, I tend to only post things I am happy with. It’s the same with quality control in The Studio – it only goes out of the door if either my guest is happy, or I’m happy (and hopefully both) with the result of hard work. Today I’m going to share the process that led to this illustration:

Now, I know what you’re thinking – ‘that looks pretty good to me’. Ok, I accept that it isn’t completely duff, but it didn’t start that way, it isn’t what was in my head and it still isn’t ‘perfect’.

Here’s why… I used my stencils for the text which is ok, but I’d like some more variation in the typography. I miscounted the number of letters in the word ‘should’ and crammed it in the five flag banner. If I’d have done it in pencil, I’d have moved it across and added another flag. But I don’t tend to do pencil outlines first, committing directly to paper with a pen. I couldn’t Tippex out the offending word as the page isn’t white, and, besides, colouring over the top of Tippex never looks the same.

Next, I started colouring with the blue in the flourishes. That went ok. Then I bodged the colour choice for the first word, using a dusky pink which looked awful next to the blue. I covered it with a dusky yellow to attempt to get a complimentary colour to the blue and that made it worse. Eventually, I added the dark orange for shading of the bottom of the letters and that pulled it together. The yellow text went well, with the shading complementing the orange.

I decided that the text on its own was a little bare, and I juggled several ideas before committing to the flowers to fill some of the white space. The ideas included a tapering ‘road’ behind the text or a coloured panel behind the text – but I couldn’t decide on which colour would work for either. As the ideas bounced around on the theme of ‘which way’ I came up with the idea for the signpost.

I sketched that in pencil first, having learnt from my previous mistake… My next oops moment was colouring in the shaded side with a light colour of brown, which would have been inconsistent with the shading on the text. Happily, the blendability of the Polychromos pencils made this easily rectified. The positioning of the signpost and the angles of the signs is not accidental. I have an unwritten rule, that I don’t wish to obscure the text on the page whilst Bible journaling, so I drew the signs in the white spaces. It was handy to have the dotted margin line through the centre of the post to help emphasise its corner.

So, that was the process that ended up with the good-enough illustration. I still think the blue would be better in pink, but though the pencil does erase, it doesn’t completely remove all the colour, and pink with a blue colour cast would not work (in my head). All of which goes to show (I think) that an artist can have/has a hyper-critical accomplice, whom, if allowed to, can stymie or stop the artist altogether.

Time taken: 1 hour. Materials: minimal cost.

Used in these journal pages

• [amazon_textlink asin=’1473639913′ text=’NIV Black Journalling Bible with Unlined Margins’ template=’ProductLink’ store=’themanicstamp-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’ac45bd57-0086-11e9-a74d-41df2801a08f’]

• [amazon_textlink asin=’B000UEAKC4′ text=’Faber Castell Polychromos Pencils’ template=’ProductLink’ store=’themanicstamp-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’f0b495b8-0cf8-11e9-8c96-71a115136e83′]

• [amazon_textlink asin=’B004AQODNU’ text=’Sakura Pigma Micron’ template=’ProductLink’ store=’themanicstamp-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’017908cf-0cf9-11e9-8699-2582b328a467′] black pigment pen (01)

My own Bible journaling stencils, available by emailing me using link in top right of side bar.